By John Foley Guest Commentary JOHN FOLEY is a manager for Rayne of Santa Monica, a water conditioning firm.
I ENJOYED READING YOUR PIECE ON bottled water and how it compares to the tap (“H2 Oh!” June 2-3). I love blind taste tests. Irene (Manahan) did a great job. It was an unbiased piece. Here are my slightly biased remarks.
As a local water treatment professional, I see this phenomenon over and over again. For many people the bottle gives the perception of quality. It is this perception, rather than actual quality, that causes them to buy it. I like to call these folks “water snobs” because, in their minds, the bottle itself represents security. It may make them sleep better at night. I cannot say whether or not this is bad thing.
I do not believe that Santa Monica tap water has won any quality awards, but it is safe (according to the city’s most recent water quality report). It does not taste as bad as some water supplies I have seen. There are actually areas in Southern California where the tap water would have won a blind taste test 90 percent of the time against the brands (the Daily Press) used. There are also supplies that would fail an inspection because of the way they look and smell, before anyone took a sip.
For mineral content alone, some Santa Monica water would be considered barely tolerable. Residents that have been around the city for 10 years or more probably remember the MTBE contamination problem the city had. That was when leaking underground fuel tanks forced the city to close several wells and caused them to warn residents not to drink from the tap. Most residents do not know that the city still will not use some of their wells because of this problem.
As a municipal water provider, the city of Santa Monica is responsible for testing the water that they deliver regularly. This is done to make sure that it meets national primary drinking water standards. This is actually how problems like toxic levels of a fuel additive (MTBE) are discovered. There is no standard for taste. Standardized testing will pick up only the things that they know about and are looking for. Unknown contaminants are normally discovered only after a problem comes up (Erin Brockovich comes to mind).
The real reason that buying our water in bottles is irresponsible and a bad idea has nothing to do with quality. It has nothing to do with taste. In fact, as your taste test shows, for many folks, tap water often does measure up taste-wise with no treatment at all. No, the problem with bottled water, as far as I can see, is that it is terribly inefficient. If you think driving a gas-guzzling SUV is irresponsible, a little reading about the life cycle of a plastic water bottle will have you refilling at the tap in no time.
The companies that manufacture plastic bottles do not publicize how much energy it takes to make them. I have never heard them mention that a very low percentage of their bottles are properly recycled, or that the bottle that it took you five minutes to empty could stay in the environment for 70,000 years. There are even some people now who believe that the bottle itself might be putting something into the water.
Bottled water costs pennies to make and dollars to buy, not because of the water, but rather because of the bottling and the weight. Just like free dirt would cost you money to have delivered to where you need it, the cost of your water is mostly in the transportation (and profit).
The bottled water business is so profitable that the soda guys (Coke sells Desani and Aquafina is a Pepsi product) could not stay away. When they found out that we would buy one of their raw materials without the expensive additives, and that we would actually pay more for it, they were all in.
We live in the most developed nation in the world. Our economy relies on us being consumers. We pay over three dollars a gallon to burn inefficient fuels that pollute the air we breathe, even though better, cleaner technology exists. We are filling our solid waste landfills and polluting our environment at a frightening rate. We are consumers and we are proud of it. We watch the commercials, we read the ads and, like robots, we go out and buy the product. In this case, we are choosing a big diesel truck, polluting plastic and other waste to pay a lot more for something that comes conveniently to our house in a pipe almost for free. Hopefully, future generations will be smarter than we have been.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.